India has just 60 professionals to navigate dredgers, specialized ships used for deepening ports, even as harbours need their services to receive bigger vessels so that shipowners, exporters and importers can chase economies of scale and achieve lower costs.

The Scottish government has rejected plans to build one of Europe’s biggest onshore wind farms due what it said was the “significant adverse impacts” on the local environment.

The vice-president of the European Transport Commission, Jacque Barrot, has called for the wreck of the half sunken ‘New Flame’ cargo boat be removed from the Gibraltar Bay as soon as possible. He noted that the operation was underway with the arrival of the specialist ‘Big Foot’ salvage vessel, and would take some three months to complete.

Jan De Nul Group has recently been awarded several contracts around the world which together are worth in excess of Euros 1 billion. The projects will be executed in markets such as Peru, Trinidad and Brazil.

Dockwise Shipping, a subsidiary of Dockwise Ltd., won five contracts worth close to US$18 million.

French tug crews have called off their planned national strike following a surprise decision by the port of Le Havre authority to suspend the operating licence of local Kotug subsidiary SNRH.

Nautilus Minerals and Neptune Minerals are betting that the next great metals rush will take place more than 1,500 m (5,000 ft) below the sea. Nautilus is the first company to commercially explore the ocean floor for gold and copper seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits. Its main focus is the Solwara 1 Project, a polymetallic copper, gold, zinc, silver deposit that is under 1,600 m (5,200 ft) of water off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific Oceans’ Rim of Fire.